Wikimedia Commons By Juan Carlos Gomi Bogota, Jan 11 (EFE).- The Spanish galleon San Jose did not sink off Colombia under attack by English ships, as contemporaneous accounts say, and perhaps it did not go down in the Caribbean with its load of treasure due to a powerful explosion, as English commodore Charles Wager reported, nautical researcher Daniel de Narvaez MacAllister told EFE. Th...

Source: Powerball.com Washington, Jan 10 (EFE).- The Powerball lottery hit $1.3 billion on Sunday, making it the richest lottery prize ever up for grabs in the United States, where lottery fever has afflicted millions of people. No one won the Powerball drawing on Saturday night, with the prize money rolling over to the next drawing. Hundreds of millions of dollars were wagered on Friday...

FreeStockPhotos.biz The looming economy crisis in Latin America is becoming more apparent with new reports from Mexico and Venezuela. The national currency of Mexico showed signs of retail weakness as global markets plummeted due to concerns about reduced growth of the Chinese economy, and the price of crude oil produced in Venezuela, an OPEC member nation, fell well below $30. The followin...

Panama Canal Panama City, Jan 9 (EFE).- The consortium responsible for the main Panama Canal expansion project is the subject of a criminal complaint in the Central American country for allegedly inflating its cost overrun claims. National Bar Association Vice President Juan Carlos Arauz filed the complaint, to which EFE gained access, on Thursday with Panama's Attorney General's Office. ...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jan 9 (EFE).- Mexico's attorney general said marines were able to recapture Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman due partly to their discovery that the fugitive Sinaloa cartel kingpin had contacted people in the film industry about making a movie about his life. "An important aspect in determining his location was having discovere...

By Riley Brands Press Release from the Office of U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) and Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX-12), as well as U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica S. Fitzgerald Haney and Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States Román Macaya, traveled last week to the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua to see firsthand how Central America is dealing wit...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jan 7 (EFE).- Three fugtives wanted on criminal conspiracy, drug, sexual abuse and homicide charges by U.S. federal courts were extradited to the United States, the Mexican Attorney General's Office said. "The Foreign Relations Secretariat cited the corresponding agreements under which the government of our country granted the extradition requested by U.S. aut...

Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Jan 6 (EFE).- Three officers of Guatemala's PNC national police are being held hostage at an indigenous community in the western province of Solola, where locals burned two patrol cars during disturbances sparked by the slaying of a resident by an off-duty cop, authorities said Tuesday. A PNC spokesperson told EFE that talks were begun on Tuesday in an atte...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jan 5 (EFE).- Police officers in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas rescued 45 migrants from Guatemala and Honduras in Reynosa, located across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group said. State police officers responding to a tip from the public went to a house in the border city's Puertas del Sol district, where people...

Seoul, Jan 3 (EFE).- North Korea could be preparing to test its ability to produce a hydrogen bomb, the South Korea intelligence services said Sunday based on recent military activity by Pyongyang. The announcement comes a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un mentioned for the first time that his country has an H-bomb, although at the time experts doubted that the Asian pariah state coul...

Panama Canal Panama City, Jan 2 (EFE).- President Juan Carlos Varela said Saturday that the inauguration of a newly expanded Panama Canal would take place in May in the presence of several heads of state and government, while also calling on the consortium responsible for the third-locks project to stop waging a media battle with his government. "Sometime in May 2016, our country will once ...

ISIS fighters in Iraq. Source: Wikimedia Commons London, Jan 3 (EFE).- The Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday released a videotape online in which it allegedly executes five men it described as British "spies," going on to threaten one day to invade the British Isles, the BBC reported. In the video, which British media showed portions of, a masked man - pistol in hand and speaking with ...

Source: Flickr Commons Mexico City, Jan 2 (EFE).- The newly installed mayor of the central Mexican city of Temixco was killed Saturday, a day after she took office, officials said. "They've informed me of the attack on the mayor of Temixco, Gisela Mota, a young and dear colleague. This a challenge by organized crime. We won't give in," Graco Ramirez - the governor of the central state of Mo...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Jan 1 (EFE).- A record 41 endangered Florida panthers were killed in 2015, mostly as a result of collisions with motor vehicles, state authorities said Friday. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, or FWC, said the new record was attributable to the state's growing human population, a demographic trend that is leading to greater contact between peop...

Source: Wikimedia Commons New York, Dec 31 (EFE).- A 25-year-old man was arrested in New York state for allegedly intending to commit a terrorist act on New Year's Eve, inspired by the Islamic State jihadist group, authorities said Thursday. The man was identified as Emanuel L. Lutchman of Rochester, a convert to Islam with a criminal record and mental problems, and he said he was instructe...

Wikimedia Commons Brussels, Dec 30 (EFE).- Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur decided Wednesday to cancel all fireworks displays and other public festivities planned for New Year's Eve, local media reported. The mayor made the decision after it became known on Tuesday that Belgian security forces had foiled - by arresting the presumed terrorists - a possible attack on "several emblematic sites" pla...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Rio de Janeiro, Dec 29 (EFE).- Rio de Janeiro firefighters are beginning to use drones equipped with cameras and floating life preservers for quicker rescues and to prevent people from drowning at beaches like Ipanema and Copacabana, authorities said Tuesday. A drone's camera will be able to transmit the exact position of a person in danger and its life preserver c...

Bogota, Dec 29 (EFE).- Colombian police in this capital arrested a 58-year-old man and charged him with illegally stockpiling and selling radioactive material, authorities said Tuesday. The man, whose identity was not released, had been illegally storing chemical elements such as Iridium-192 and depleted uranium in a house in Engativa, a town close to Bogota's El Dorado international airport, p...

Source: Flickr Commons San Juan, Dec 28 (EFE).- Three police, two of them women, were shot and killed Monday in Puerto Rico by a fellow officer during a heated argument at the Police Command in Ponce, a city on the south side of the Caribbean island. Police reported that Lieut. Luz Soto, Maj. Frank Roman and patrolwoman Rosario Hernandez were gunned down by Candelario Rivera, a fellow offic...

Guatemala/San Jose, Dec 28 (EFE).- The Central American Integration System agreed on Monday to carry out an initial "pilot humanitarian transfer" of thousands of Cuban migrants from Costa Rica to El Salvador, and later to Mexico, in January, after they were stranded in the region during their attempts to travel to the United States. The move was agreed to after a working group was set up that w...

Wikimedia Commons Beijing, Dec 27 (EFE).- The first direct flight between China and Cuba took off on Sunday from the international airport in Beijing for Havana, with state-owned carrier Air China aiming to promote Chinese tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean. The route is the first direct one linking China, the world's second-largest economy, and the Caribbean, as well as the first r...

San Jose, Dec 26 (EFE).- Costa Rica's Immigration Department said Saturday that a total of 56 Cubans who entered the country illegally will be deported in the coming days. The Immigration Department's press office told the media that those immigrants failed to obtain a Costa Rican visa legally and are being held in San Jose's Hatillo district. Since Nov. 14, Costa Rica has issued almost 8,00...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Dec 26 (EFE).- Two suspected criminals were killed in a clash with marines in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, authorities said Saturday. The marines came under attack Friday by suspected members of an organized crime gang while on patrol in the municipality of Badiraguato, the Navy Secretariat said in a bulletin, adding that a navy helicopter that w...

Source: Red Cross of Costa Rica Paso Canoas, Panama, Dec 25 (EFE).- Some 800 Cubans spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on the streets or in shelters at the Panamanian-Costa Rican border, not at their final destination as they had hoped. "I thought I'd spend Christmas in the United States with my family," said Sarai Santos, who spent the night of Dec. 24 with friends from her hometown of ...

New York, Dec 24 (EFE).- The temperature in New York soared to more than 70 F (21 C) on Thursday, the warmest Christmas Eve on record in the Big Apple, and is expected to climb even higher later in the day, U.S. media reported. The previous mark was set in 1996, when the mercury rose to 63 F (17 C), according to American broadcast TV network NBC. Record-high temperatures also are expected on...

Flickr Commons By Yeny Garcia Havana, Dec 24 (EFE).- At the close of a year marked by the reestablishment of relations with Washington, Cubans are celebrating the Christmas holidays without big parties but the private restaurants known as "paladares" are causing family traditions to evolve and many people are trying out their culinary offerings. Since 1997, when Christmas was reinstated ...

Source: Erica Hagan Memorial Fund Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- A court in the southern Chilean city of Temuco on Wednesday acquitted due to lack of evidence the only suspect in the murder of U.S. psychologist Erica Hagan, who was killed in early September 2014, court sources reported. Domingo Cofre Ferrada, 45, a security guard at the Bautista College in Temuco, where the 22-year-old victim liv...

Pixabay Commons Rio de Janeiro, Dec 22 (EFE).- A 33-year-old man was attacked by a shark, which tore off his hand and part of his arm, while he was swimming a few meters (yards) offshore at a beach on the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, medical personnel reported on Tuesday. The victim, whose name was withheld, was transported on Tuesday morning to a hospital in the mainland city o...

NY Times screenshot New York, Dec 21 (EFE).- The United States should put an end to immigration policies that make it easier for Cubans to leave their island and come to live in this country, The New York Times said in an editorial. For the newspaper, these regulations amount to "a Cold War relic that is hindering the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana." "Congress s...

Source: Flickr Commons A criminal division judge in the municipality of Carazo, located about 70 kilometers southwest of Managua, has named four suspects in the murder of Canadian expat Rajan Deedar Gill, who was found beaten to death in his country home near La Boquita in Nicaragua. According to a November 30th wire report by Agencia EFE, police officers found the victim next to Marbely de...

Wikimedia Commons Paris, Dec 20 (EFE).- The device whose discovery forced an Air France plane to make an emergency landing in Kenya was not a bomb, the carrier's CEO, Frederic Gagey, said Sunday. The suspected bomb found in one of the restrooms on the plane, which was flying from Mauritius to Paris, was made from cardboard and had some kind of timer. The object appeared to be a bomb but ...

Wikimedia Commons La Paz, Dec 18 (EFE).- The government of the western Bolivian province of Oruro issued a declaration of natural disaster Saturday after learning that Lake Poopo, the second largest in the country after Titicaca and which once covered more than 4,600 sq. kilometers (1,780 sq. miles), has almost dried up. Oruro Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez enacted a law that declared it a natura...

San Jose, Dec 19 (EFE).- Costa Rica's government said it would stop issuing transit visas to Cubans after failing to reach an agreement with its neighbors to allow these migrants to continue on through Central America toward the United States. "We can't keep receiving migrants indefinitely ... Please don't come to Costa Rica. We don't want to deport you. Don't come because you can't go through,...

Panama Canal Panama City, Dec 18 (EFE).- The inauguration of an expanded Panama Canal, previously scheduled for April, will be postponed due to cracks detected in the new set of locks that are the centerpiece of the $5.25 billion overhaul, the interoceanic waterway's chief administrator said Friday. Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, head Jorge Quijano said the agency was still planning for th...

Source: Flickr Commons Acapulco, Mexico, Dec 17 (EFE).- After previously denying media reports about the discovery of nearly a score of bodies, the governor of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero said Thursday that a federal prosecutor had informed him that a large number of human remains had been found. "Indeed, the (federal) Attorney General's Office is investigating the discovery of t...

Source: US Homeland Security Washington, Dec 16 (EFE).- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday added another terrorist alert level to the system created in 2011, which consists of two scales and never has been implemented due to the lack of credible threats. At a press conference, Johnson presented the new intermediate level after announcing several days ago that there wo...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Dec 15 (EFE).- The Colombian Culture Ministry officially refused to give U.S.-based treasure hunters Sea Search Armada access to the coordinates of the site where the wreck of the Spanish galleon San Jose was found on Nov. 27. In a letter signed by Minister Mariana Garces and made public on Tuesday, Colombia ruled out the possibility suggested by SSA of receiving a...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Dec 13 (EFE).- Thousands of people participated in protests Sunday in more than 100 cities across Brazil, demanding an end to the administration of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces impeachment in the lower house of Congress. One of the biggest protests took place in Brasilia, the country's capital, where about 5,000 people, according to police estimates, ga...

Media Release by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba - The President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, arrived in Havana yesterday, December 13, leading a delegation of government officials and business leaders with the goal of strengthening relations with Cuba. Solís indicated that during the official visit, he hoped to conclude the process of normalization of bilate...

Taliban operating in Afghanistan. Wikimedia Commons Kabul, Dec 12 (EFE).- Ten people, including two Spanish police officers, died in a Taliban attack on a Spanish Embassy compound in the Afghan capital and an ensuing gun battle, a nearly 12-hour incident that ended early Saturday and represented a new show of force by the insurgents. Both the Spanish and Afghan governments confirmed Saturda...